The readings reflect the focus that ends each liturgical year and begins each new one: The Christian sense of history includes a belief that time will end not only for each of us but for the whole of creation and that there will be justice (and, we pray, mercy) for all at that time.

Isaiah 2:1-5. This vision of the coming messianic age has a hopeful focus, in which the Temple Mount in Jerusalem is seen to be the center that draws the nations together and the place from which moral teaching is sent into the whole world. This hopeful, peaceful vision is set in contrast to the dark prediction of the Day of the Lord as a day of judgment in today’s Gospel.

Psalm of the Day: Ps (121) 122
One of the "Songs of Ascent" sung by pilgrims as they approached Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. This psalm reflects an idealized picture of Jerusalem as the place of political as well as religious unity. Used by Christians, it sings of our hope for the "new" Jerusalem.

Romans 13:11-14. Paul, writing from an early Christian perspective which expected the imminent return of the risen Lord, calls the people to a moral life, using the traditional morality of the “two ways”—a right way and a wrong way, the way of light and the way of darkness.

Matthew 24:37-44. In this apocalyptic passage, Jesus emphasizes the tradition that the messianic “Son of Man” will arrive to herald the Day of the Lord. In the prophets, this day could be either a hopeful time (see the Isaiah reading) or a time to dread—a time of terrible, swift judgment. Jesus warns of judgment, though he does not offer any reason why “one will be taken and one will be left.” His message is simply the need to be prepared: “At an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”